


in my honey, in my milk

by isaksara (syailendra)



Series: Atsumu + Sakusa + The National = ? [7]
Category: Haikyuu!!
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Atsumu being more stubborn than a mule, Established Relationship, M/M, Miya Kiyoomi, POV: you are Atsumu and you move in on a sailboat with your husband
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-11
Updated: 2020-04-11
Packaged: 2021-02-23 00:11:15
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,701
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23602630
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/syailendra/pseuds/isaksara
Summary: “You missed a spot.”Atsumu turns. Kiyoomi has ascended the staircase that leads from their cabin to the wheelhouse. He makes his way over to the panel Atsumu is wiping and hovers his fingertip over a tiny speck of dirt. Atsumu rolls his eyes and goes over it again, applying extra pressure. “See anythin’ else I missed?”SakuAtsu Week Day 7:Don’t leave my hyper heart alone on the water. Cover me in rag and bone sympathy. ‘Cause I don’t wanna get over you.(Sorrow)
Relationships: Miya Atsumu/Sakusa Kiyoomi
Series: Atsumu + Sakusa + The National = ? [7]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1691503
Comments: 26
Kudos: 269
Collections: SakuAtsu Week 2020





	in my honey, in my milk

**Author's Note:**

> title and prompt from Sorrow by The National

_Don’t leave my hyper heart alone on the water. Cover me in rag and bone sympathy. ‘Cause I don’t wanna get over you._

* * *

The picture on the phone screen is old—it was taken three years ago, when Osamu had accidentally gotten rice and nori all over his face on Kiyoomi’s birthday party. It’s one of Atsumu’s favorite pictures of Osamu. It captures his essence quite well, he thinks—the calm expression before the storm of insults, the ridiculous apron he insists on wearing, the rice.

Atsumu lets his phone ring until it doesn’t anymore. Osamu calls again; Atsumu doesn’t touch the phone. This goes on five times, until Osamu apparently gives up on talking to him today. He talked to Osamu yesterday. He’ll talk to Osamu again tomorrow. He already met his KPIs for this quarter, so it’s not like Osamu really has any cause to be concerned about anything substantial.

One of the ways a boat is not like a house on land is that by virtue of being on the water all the time, it is much more damp. If he’s not careful about making sure it stays clean, mold and bacteria will start growing everywhere until the whole place smells so awful you could wake up in the morning and start throwing up immediately. (He knows from experience.) Kiyoomi had been so anal about it at first that Atsumu found himself becoming fast friends with the washcloth, mild detergent, and baking soda mixed with hot water.

“You missed a spot.”

Atsumu turns. Kiyoomi has ascended the staircase that leads from their cabin to the wheelhouse. He makes his way over to the panel Atsumu is wiping and hovers his fingertip over a tiny speck of dirt. Atsumu rolls his eyes and goes over it again, applying extra pressure. “See anythin’ else I missed?”

“Six calls from your brother,” Kiyoomi says as he goes to sit on the chair, behind the controls. “He’s just worried, Atsumu.”

“He’s worried every day!”

“He wouldn’t be worried if you weren’t so worrying.” Kiyoomi turns his eye to the horizon. “If you’re going to say he doesn’t have to be because I’m here, you should know it takes _at least_ two people to worry about you at any given time.”

“Yeah, yeah. Whatever.”

It’s going to rain. Atsumu knows this because he woke up with his shoulder hurting like a motherfucker today. Sometimes when it gets like this he thinks he’d like to go to a court somewhere and throw some tosses, just to see how badly it can hurt the moment he stretches to hit the ball. Would the pain send him careening to the ground? Would he be able to bear it enough to send the ball in a perfect arc, so Kiyoomi could spike it? If he could have one wish it would be that, he supposes. Send him back to a Black Jackals game—any game really, he’s not picky, every game felt career-defining—and let him toss to Kiyoomi just one more time. He’s starting to forget the way that spin catches the stadium lights. 

“You’ve done some checks, right? Ya wanna help me with inventory?”

Atsumu sets the checklist on the panel in front of Kiyoomi. Both of them are pretty fastidious, but Kiyoomi’s more suited to this than Atsumu is. He’d learned quickly to habituate himself to the practice of checking their supplies—if you run out of sugar when you’re out in the open ocean, it’s over. Bitter black coffee forever for you until you dock.

Kiyoomi tuts. “Running low on dishwashing liquid. And shampoo. And coffee.”

“Nearest port?”

“We could sail around Yuge and dock at Onomichi, if you’re so inclined. Seaside town. Nice markets. You could try out the bike trail. I used to go there with my family in the summer and ride along the edges of the islands, making our way from bridge to bridge. It turns out there are a lot of interesting vending machines out there. The first time my mother insisted on trying out at least two things from each, I told her she’d just ingested enough sugar to give an entire army cavities, afterwards. She was heartbroken.”

“Onomichi sounds good,” he says, smiling. “And yeah, maybe I could use some time on a bike. Promise I won’t go wild on the vending machines. Water only. Hear the forests are kinda pretty up there too.”

Kiyoomi nods. “The view of the ocean’s incredible from the trail,” he says with an ironic little smile.

“Now why the hell would I need a view of the fuckin’ ocean,” Atsumu grumbles, gesturing at the window Kiyoomi is looking through, at the grayish-blue expanse outside. Kiyoomi laughs. 

He’s beautiful, even washed out like this, in sunlight that’s been filtered through clouds heavy with the promise of rain. His hair is always so soft when he wakes up. The curls are a little wild but they yield, and Atsumu loves nothing more than the way his ring gleams silver amongst dark strands when he runs his hands through Kiyoomi’s hair in the morning.

“Do you ever miss your land legs, Atsumu?” Kiyoomi asks, probably thinking about the bike trail and the forests. The streets of Osaka. Gravel. Sometimes he thinks Kiyoomi misses land more than Atsumu does.

“I dunno, do you?” He laughs at the look on Kiyoomi’s face. “I know, I know. Stupid question. Land legs, sea legs. Both just ways of gettin’ around. My sea legs are so good now I don’t know why I’d want land legs permanently anymore. I mean, what’s the land got? Seven-Eleven? Traffic jams? I’ve got better seafood and a view no matter where I go. I think the sea legs are winnin’.”

Kiyoomi snorts. “Sunk cost fallacy.”

“‘Scuse me?”

“The British and French governments kept funding the Concorde project even though they knew the aircraft wasn’t going to be financially viable, because they’d already put too much money into it. How much money have you spent on this boat, Atsumu? The amenities—the toilet, the stove, the showers? The pillows? The cleaning supplies?” Kiyoomi gets up from the chair and goes outside.

“Hey, ya liked the pillows! And the cleaning supplies,” Atsumu calls out. “I ain’t a government, you know—what do ya think you’re doin’, talkin’ ‘bout financial viability. My finances are just fine. Ya see my balance sheets and shit, right? I’m killin’ it.”

Atsumu walks to where Kiyoomi hovers anxiously by the railing of the deck. This isn’t about the goddamn land legs. This isn’t about the boat. “Yer thinkin’ somethin’ stupid again. Spit it out.”

“How much have you put into loving me? Imitating my cleaning habits, planning your meals around my food preferences? What did you sell when you decided to become a liveaboard?”

There it is.

“Yeah, well, if it upsets you so much, no one’s tellin’ you to stay. I’ll dock at Onomichi. And ya can leave. No harm, no foul. You don’t have to—keep humorin’ me, or whatever, if that’s what this is for ya.” Atsumu says, more quietly, “I don’t think that’s what this is, but maybe you’re just lookin’ out for me. Well, don’t. You were never the type of person to do things out of pity. I don’t want ya to start now.”

“Who says I’m only staying for your sake? I was promised a lifetime with you,” Kiyoomi retorts, lifting his left hand briefly in front of Atsumu’s face. Platinum glints around his ring finger.

Atsumu can’t help himself. “Ha, you got one.”

“That was terrible,” Kiyoomi says, but he’s smiling. “ _And_ morbid. Congratulations, you’re leveling up.”

When Atsumu grips the railing, the edge of his right hand is pressed just against that of Kiyoomi’s left. Kiyoomi raises his hand and puts it just above Atsumu’s. There’s a chill settling around them. As Atsumu’s motherfucking shoulder predicted, it does begin to rain.

“Do you ever wish I’d touched you anyway, back then?” Kiyoomi asks, looking at his hand on top of Atsumu’s. Atsumu loves him, loves him, loves him. Present tense.

“Yeah,” Atsumu answers, honest. “But it wouldn’t have changed anythin’. I was already so happy.” He looks at Kiyoomi. “I’m happy now.”

“No, you’re not.”

He is, he wants to say. He doesn’t care what Osamu says when he calls or how often Kiyoomi has this conversation with him whenever they’re about to dock somewhere. They don’t have to talk about it like this. It can always be like it is when they’re out on the open ocean, and there’s nothing but the sun, the wind, and the call of seabirds—where nothing seems real anyway so the sunlight _does_ glimmer in Kiyoomi’s eyes and the wind _does_ throw his hair back from his face. Then maybe that’s not because of the unreal way light seems to bend when they’re far away from any city, from any human soul. Maybe that’s because they’re getting warmer.

Atsumu turns to him and shoves the wet hair plastered to his forehead out of his eyes. Kiyoomi is perfect, untouched by the cascade of raindrops. “My turn to ask somethin’, then—do ya ever think about where you are?”

Kiyoomi smiles, sad and fond and tired all at once. Behind him, the rain has taken away the reflection of the sky from the surface of the water, leaving an endless plain of static stretching out into the misty haze beyond. He glances at it quickly, then looks back at Atsumu.

“Does it matter?” he asks. “I’m here.”

Atsumu laughs. The rain is bitter on his tongue. “You’re makin’ my point for me, y’know. That’s what I’ve been saying: it doesn’t matter.”

Kiyoomi ushers him into the cabin and frets over him until he’s wrapped up in a towel, next to the heater, with a mug of hot tea in his hands. When he’s dry and perfectly toasty, Atsumu gets back to the wheelhouse, pushing buttons and calling to the port. Onomichi, for supplies. A day to sample the bike trail. Then—he turns to look at Kiyoomi behind him, head turned to the world outside—back to the only life he wants to live. 

**Author's Note:**

> Nobody:  
> Absolutely nobody:  
> Me, during SakuAtsu week: the OCEAN. Big. Blue. THE SEA. where all the SALT WATER is.
> 
> Anyway, *Matt Berninger voice* sorrow’s my body on the waves. I wanted to use ‘a city sorrow built’ as the title but I thought that was going to be too obvious? Haha. My take on events is that a boating accident in a storm happened, and Atsumu was trying to hold on to Sakusa but Sakusa got washed away anyway (and he can’t swim, incidentally, because he could never make himself go into the water)—this was also how Atsumu injured his shoulder, and jury's out on whether or not the injury is _career-ending_ although Atsumu just refuses to go to physical therapy all the same. Then Atsumu swears off the sea but one time he goes sailing to try to look for Sakusa’s body on his own and then Sakusa’s ghost appears and Atsumu’s like, “Right. Time to buy a sailboat and live on that, I guess!” Ta-da. You are free to interpret everything however you like though.
> 
> If you’ve read everything I’ve written for this event, thanks for sticking with me through seven days of incredibly self-indulgent… something. Have never been this prolific, fanfic-wise, in my entire life. Which is both incredible and worrying, because I literally made the decision to do this the Friday before SakuAtsu week started, thinking I’d manage to fill like three prompts, but now we’re at seven out of seven and it feels like my brain is an overcooked cauliflower. But I’m incredibly happy about this. Bless this ship and the two assholes in it.


End file.
